Got some good work done this week and the tech test is progressing smoothly.
The new town generation was causing several problems, mainly because there were so unanswered questions: should there be roads? how should towns be set up? how many houses should there be in towns?
The search to answer these questions was not terribly well documented with screenshots, but included some highlights such as generating towns exactly like monster lairs (but slightly more friendly), small sub-grids of houses, and little road grids.
Making the town resemble a monster lair just didn't make too much sense. The lairs were designed for each room to have one or more exit, for instance, and a small, sensibly designed house that a player can move through while still having some decoration should have only one exit. In addition, this didn't lend too well for having each house have some crop fields near it.
Sub-grids made the houses very regular, so I did a lot of playing around with the size and settled on 8x12. This allowed for a little play in the sideways direction and a lot of play in the back-and-forth direction. This led to some good variance. I had previously experimented with some road grids, and adding these back in proved to be a good idea, and brought some more coherence to the towns.
Not quite there, but pretty close.
More variety will be returning to towns next week, since I'll have a bit more time to work on things. Following that, extensive generation and an actual tech test: determining if the file sizes are feasible with a very large area. Remember to email any questions, comments, and prayer requests you have to [email protected], or just leave them in the comments below.